How did I do? Sizing up my predictions with the actual Oscar nominations

For what seemed to be, well, not exactly a foregone conclusion as much as a likely trajectory, going into today’s Oscar nominations, the announcements this morning sure made the race that much more exciting, if a little perplexing. And it opened the field to Lincoln, Life of Pi and Les Miserables cementing their frontrunner statuses, while also putting the brakes on Argo and Zero Dark Thirty’s momentum.

What was that people were saying about the inauguration this year of a problematic online voting system for Academy members leading to a younger skewing crop of nominees and away from traditional Oscar bait movies?

And I suffered, too. My predictions were all shot to heck, starting with my assertion that 10 films would be in contention for Best Picture. Just like last year, there are only nine nominees.

So let’s get to the hard part and see how I did second guessing the hive mind known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Best Picture – Seven of the 10 I picked made the cut, but Moonrise Kingdom, The Master and Skyfall proved to be just pipe dreams on my part. In their place: Amour and Django Unchained.

Best Director – I don’t care who you are or what you’re now claiming, no one saw this coming. It seems inconceivable to me that both Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow could get snubbed for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. Bigelow alone has been raking in the awards for weeks. And even if one somehow didn’t make the cut and Michael Haneke got in, it wasn’t even on anyone else’s radar that the other Ben, or Benh (Zeitlin) would get a nomination. Huge support for Silver Linings Playbook gave the edge to David O. Russell as well. I went two for five in this category.

Best Actor – I’m sad for John Hawkes, but ecstatic that Joaquin Phoenix’s foot-in-mouth disease didn’t cost him a nomination. Otherwise, four out of five here.

Best Actress – OK, I was betting against youngest ever Best Actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis, but even if she had taken a spot I thought it would be at the expense of Naomi Watts, not my beloved Marion Cotillard. The former Oscar winner lost her legs to a killer whale in Rust and Bone, all Watts and Wallis did was survive horrific natural disasters. Four for five again.

Best Supporting Actor – Well, they went for Robert De Niro again, his seventh career nomination (but amazingly, his first in 20 years). By including him and not his fellow Scorsese muse Leonardo DiCaprio, it made the field an all previous winners slate. Four of them even won in this category. Four correct picks seems to be my sweet spot.

Best Supporting Actress – Just like Trident-recommending dentists, I’m four out five yet again. I was looking for history to be made with a nod to Judi Dench and James Bond’s first acting nomination. Instead, Silver Linings Playbook makes it a full sweep: previous nominee Jacki Weaver’s placement here means the movie has a shot for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, both Best Lead Actors and both Best Supporting Actors.

Best Adapted Screenplay – Would you believe me if I said I correctly guessed four out the five eventual nominees? All the insider buzz about The Perks of Being a Wallflower led me to include it when I should have been paying attention to the Beast of the Southern Wild groundswell.

Best Original Screenplay – Finally, a break from the four for five ghetto, but it’s only because I did even worse. I picked just three correct nominees here. I thought Looper was a shoo-in and was still optimistic about The Master. But the Academy chose to honor Amour again and give Flight one of its only two nominations.